


Happy Song

by Lex Vale (deductively)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Damn this is dark I'm so sorry, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, JUST, Lots of Sex, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Pining, Okay? It's what Roy uses to cope I'm sorry, Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 19:31:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16181702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deductively/pseuds/Lex%20Vale
Summary: Today, you can't remember.Tomorrow, you won't forget.Scream your happy song at the sky, ignite the inky black with your flames.Try to burn the misery away.Try to burn the misery away.





	1. my head is like a carousel | r.m.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moistang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moistang/gifts).
  * Inspired by [FIRESIDE.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267570) by [Jeminy3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jeminy3/pseuds/Jeminy3). 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- BEFORE YOU ENTER -  
> This chapter contains:  
> \- Mentions of rape + implied noncon  
> \- Mention of prostitution  
> \- Implied previous unsafe/reckless sex  
> \- Depressive thoughts, death wishes, suicidal ideation  
> Viewer discretion is advised. Stay safe, kids.

_It hurts so bad._

I knew I’d regret it in the morning, even before I was blinded by excessive amounts of hard whiskey, even before I decided I was better off dying while I was making out with some random guy until we arrived at whatever dingy motel we could afford so I could fill the void—metaphorically and euphemistically—and forget about the future and the past and focus on the sound of skin hitting skin, the writhing bodies that would hang above me as they all but impaled me with impossibly thick flesh. Because that’s all they were, that’s all I was. A body. A means to gain control. A means to get the pain you deserve.

I knew I’d regret it, and I did it anyway.

My alarm goes off and dread fills my mind before being crushed by the dull, heavy ache of a hangover. I want to pretend I’m in a cartoon, where I could throw my alarm clock at a wall and watch it be smashed to pieces, only to be completely fixed by the next scene. Alas, this is a cruel reality that I’d brought upon myself. No room for complaints. I let out a pained groan and pressed what I hope is a reset and not a snooze. Any more _beep-beep-beep_ ing might drive me insane.

A rational part of me knows I should go into work today, but my body won’t allow it.  It simply lets my hand slide off of the alarm clock and over the side of my bed, now awake enough to remind me that my legs were not, in fact, meant to spread as far as they had last night.  God, I wish I'd let this rational side of me take over before it was too late and I was swallowing bile.  Oh well.  Maybe I just shouldn't be so stupid.  I should try being more careful when I go to the bar tonight—I shouldn't go at all.  The train of thought earns an irate snort into my pillow.  How long had I been doing this that I'd become this broken?  Why was I drawing closer and closer to selling my body when I swore to myself I'd never be like the girls at Madam Christmas's hidden brothel?

_Because you want to find someone like him again._

No hangover can push that thought away.  Once it's at the forefront of my mind, it locks into place, repeating, making echoes that bounce around in my skull.  Rather than being rational and trying to challenge the thoughts, I let them get louder and louder until they force tears into my eyes.  I can't tell if it wasn't from the intense ache all over my body or from the misery of knowing that my search is futile, and one of these days I'm going to get myself killed sleeping around so carelessly.  Whether it be by STDs (which I somehow haven't acquired, thank God) or by someone not being what he seemed on the surface and you see in the paper that the Colonel was killed after being raped when that, in fact, wasn't what happened.  No, the struggle wasn't me trying to break away from being intimately violated by a stranger.  It was me, fighting myself, squirming under the weight of my own sins and confusing my soon-to-be killer until the put the gun to my chest and...

I shouldn't be as content with dying this way as I am.  But it would almost be enough to make up for destroying the lives of people who were doing their damnedest to stand up to the horrors of the military.  I can see the image now, what I'd hoped would happen if I pulled the trigger, if my hands hadn't trembled with fear.

_I want to find someone like him again..._

I can still feel his hands closed around mine, his lips kissing them, smiling sheepishly because he knew what he was doing was wrong but he wanted to get it out in case one of us were to die at that very moment.  On a morning like this, he would pull me close and reach over me to turn off the alarm.  He'd hold me close and whisper against my back.   _You can stand to be a little late this morning, yeah?_   And I'd smile and chide him jokingly but never move from his embrace.

I want love.  Real, burning love like what I had with him.  I know that's what I want and what I should seek.  Yet here I am, lying alone in my apartment, hungover and sore and miserable.  And the cycle will repeat tomorrow, because my thoughts, as hard as they try to break free of the loop that I've trapped them in, will snap back in place, maintaining the perfect circle of hellfire in which I stay.

_You will never find someone like him again._

I'll be dead before another man like Maes Hughes walks into my life.  But then, I suppose, there's nothing better than the original.  Even if the original is long gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yee-haw, chapter one is finished and MAN it's gonna be a hecc of a long story I can already smell it but I am MMMMMMMMMM READY TO WRITE, _BOIIII_  
>  Per usual, I hope you enjoyed this, it's not over yet but jfksdlfj it might take me a while to finish so yeah  
> Have a good day, and happy FMA day!


	2. keep your tongue inside your mouth. | j.h.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings:  
> \- Suicidal ideation  
> \- Reference to Hughes's death  
> \- Addicted smoking
> 
> Anyone can read this if they want to, but it might be a little emotionally heavy at the end.

_This is the sixth_ day in a row the colonel hasn't come into the office.

I tend to forget that there are people who lie outside of our small circle of six (seven, if you counted Black Hayate) don't know the colonel like we do.  My heart always sinks when I hear their bitter insults, thrown at him behind his back as if they were any more forgiving when he was walking past.  Today is no different; I'm sitting outside of the office, an unlit cigarette hanging between my lips.  It's a weird habit, I guess, but it's comforting.  That and I never knew when I'd need to light up.  Two men walk past and acknowledge me with synchronized salutes as they walk past and continue their conversation.

"...out with some woman," one of them says.  "Wouldn't be surprised if one of his 'one night stands' turned into a family commitment.  He's not the careful type."

I need to pull the cigarette from my mouth before my teeth crush it.  Despite my better judgment, I listen in.

"Dunno," the other man responds.  A tasteless smirk resides in his voice and makes me cringe.  "I'm starting to think Mustang's not the lady's man he says he is."

"Eh?  Why's that?"

A snide response rises in my throat like bile, and I swallow it past a lump in my throat as they continue.  "Think about it: Have we ever seen Mustang outside of work flirting with any women?  Any Elizabeths or Kates?  I get he's popular with pretty much every lady in Amestris by now"—I snort quietly in spite of myself—"but has he ever slept with any of 'em?"  The footsteps stop too abruptly; I nearly inhale the cigarette between my lips, even though I know better than to think they could've heard me.

The silence breaks when the other man speaks.  "You've got a point.  You'd think that as much as he wastes his days away on the phone, he'd come in just a little more sore or hungover,  _anything_ to show for it.  Never thought of it like that.  You gonna ask?"

"Me?   _Hell_ no, have you seen the smug look on that guy's face?  Soon as I saw him I'd forget about my stupid gripe.  He doesn't seem like he's all that when you're not in front of him, but God damn."

"Well.  Guess that'll just be in the air 'til he comes out about it."

With that, the topic is dropped and I let out a relieved sigh, pressing a hand to my forehead.  Pity that I didn't really have anything to do, no fieldwork, paperwork, nothing to keep my mind off of the colonel.  Nothing to keep me from worrying so much that I was worried about it all coming out in vomit instead of words.  As if that's a pleasant thought.  I don't know why I'm so caught up with him, especially now when he's probably doing some secret shit that we shouldn't be worried about.

_Hopefully not the kind of stupid shit that got Hughes..._

I can't get the word "killed" to form in my head.  I wasn't even that close to the now Brigadier General, but his death was still a knife through the chest.  It made me wince sometimes, thinking about how magnified that pain must be for the colonel.  Though he didn't particularly seem like the lying-in-bed-to-rot type.

Maybe none of us knew him as well as we thought we did.

Without warning, my body forces itself to its feet and starts walking away from the office where I'm supposed to be.  My mind doesn't get a chance to catch up until the fresh air of Central City is blown in my face by the once-imposing doors of Central Command.   _I need to light up_ , my body screams.   _I need to light up.  I need to light up.  I NEED TO LIGHT UP._   And per the usual, before I can stop myself with a harsh mental "no", I'm already exhaling a thin cloud of smoke from my first long drag of the day.  Ironic how the colonel is the one who told me that my smoking would become a problem, how it was a habit that stuck after the war and I needed to break it before it became me, and here I was.  Everyone knows me to be the soldier that smoked, if they don't know me as the "secondary gunman" or "the blonde kid with the poofy hair in front" or something like that.  I'm "Second Lieutenant Havoc.  You know, the one who's always smoking".

Apparently, despite both being fully aware of and loathing this label, I'm perfectly fine with pulling another cigarette from its home in the box with its folks and placing it between my lips.

_I needed to stop it before it became me, huh?  Sorry, Chief.  You're a little late to the party._

Yet knowing the colonel would care, shown through his soft yet disapproving glare, somehow allowed a familiar warmth to unfurl in my stomach.  To any normal person who had a perfectly fine history with romance, this would be a fine sensation, the kind that you get from seeing the one you love happy, the kind that reminds that you have someone that's steady and will be there for you indefinitely.  For me?  It makes me want to chew my smokes and choke on the ashes.

I hate trying to compensate for the emptiness with scores of women that I admittedly have no interest in.  They, for better or for worse, are to fill a void.  And maybe that's why none of them stick around; maybe they can sense where my heart is.  One of my exes wished me good luck wherever I went next.  I'll never forget the knowing tone in her voice, like she genuinely believed I'd find the person I was so desperately seeking.

The person I wanted but was constantly just out of my grasp.

Part of me wants to hate him as much as I used to, for unwittingly grabbing my heart and squeezing it until it became a bloody mess on the floor.  I want to think of a ruthless heartbreaker, a ladykiller, but just like I can no longer think of the genocidal maniac that I once thought him to be when the ashes and smoke would drift towards the air the grunts would breathe while the State Alchemists did their "work", I can't think of him this way.

I wish he didn't have such a reputation.  I wish  _I_ didn't have such a reputation.

God, I wish it were just as easy as walking up to a woman and asking her out, giving her flowers and a pleasant smile.  But in the end, I don't think it's solely women I have bad luck with.  I think whatever higher power out there who controls love has it out for me all around.  Otherwise he would've been in my arms a while ago.

The box is half empty by the time I finish my train of thought.  I shove the box in my pocket after pulling another cigarette from it and placing it between my lips, not bothering to light it.  I need to get something done before I implode and make myself feel worse.

I've broken into a run.  My body is now at my mind's mercy.

_Run.  Shut the door behind you.  Don't let him in.  Please don't let him in._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my God, a second chapter! Of a shitty quality because I'm just trying to establish plot! I'm...so sorry. I tried really hard to make this worth everyone's while but I work in short chapters. ;_; hjfskdf  
> Anyway, my whole thing with Havoc once loathing Mustang is also from - DOO DOO DOOOOOO - jeminy3's story, FIRESIDE! Please, please go read it if you haven't already, and check out the rest of their works as well! They make your heart shatter into tiny pieces and their art makes my heart smile. :,)  
> Also the end wasn't supposed to be angsty but I was listening to "a hundred years unresolved" by GHOST and then it just kinda...yeah. Whoops.  
> I hope you all enjoy, I'm sorry again for the poor quality hfkjsd

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!  
> So get this: I just read jeminy3's story FIRESIDE and it's AMAZING. If you haven't read it, you are out of your mind, [you can find it here.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15267570/chapters/35415525)  
> Inspired by this lovely, lovely story, I decided to write one of my own. Follows the canon plotline of FMA:B but in a modern setting, based on a couple of different songs ranging a variety of genres (from Happy Song by Bring Me the Horizon to Split Idol by GHOST! Jeez, I sound like a Kidz Bop ad), dark themes, etc.  
> But seriously, if you haven't read FIRESIDE., PLEASE go read it. Not just the last chapter, the ENTIRE THING. It's the inspiration for this work and I think that my spin-off-but-also-not-a-spin-off-because-it's-a-completely-separate-plot (???) will turn out well.  
> Thank you SO much for giving this a read if you did!
> 
> ...also the lyrics in the summary aren't lyrics at all. I just like writing my own little slam poems sometimes. Eheh~.


End file.
